You can swap out pretty much all of the default apps on your phone for something else, including the one that manages your contacts. Addappt (yes, that's with one too many d's and p's) is an alternative that saves you the hassle of messaging all of your friends whenever your number changes or accidentally sending an email to an address that has been deleted. With this app, users automatically update one another whenever they make changes, so everyone is always current.

The updated contacts app in Android M has a nifty little trick up its sleeve. You can select multiple contacts from the main list to merge, delete, or share all at once. You would think this feature already existed somewhere in the stock app, but apparently not.

Attention: the following roundup contains absolutely no mention of the new release of Google Reader... because that happened in April. But it does have some great picks for new apps from March, including our top seven and a handful of honorable mentions. News readers, social tools, and root-only apps are covered, plus some diagnostic tools for tech heads. And if customization is your thing, check out the honorable mentions section for cool icons and live wallpapers.

Drupe would like you to think that contacts on Android, and on mobile in general, are broken. They're not - phone makers and developers have been doing this for a while, after all - but that doesn't mean that they can't be improved upon. Drupe is a "floating" app that puts contacts, and the means to do all sorts of interesting things with them, in a unique overlay accessible from any other app.

Anyone who has used Android and Google services long enough will probably notice how much junk has accumulated in their contacts. There's a new version of Google Contacts in the works to fix that, and you can try a preview of it right now. Unless you have a Google Apps account. Duh.

With Lollipop 5.0, most of the Contacts app graduated to a slick new experience inspired by material, but for some reason the contact creation/editing screens clung to old holo paradigms.

The newly tweaked editing layout in Android 5.1 makes a decidedly more thoughtful use of horizontal lines and adheres to material design's standard keylines (at 16 and 72dp) making for a cleaner, clearer interface with helpful iconography highlighting each type of field.

Oh my. This is creepy. And cool. Very cool. It has stalker-like potential and unequivocal convenience. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Imagine you get a message from a contact, through SMS, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, or other apps. You start talking to said contact and they go on blabbering about some very important event that happened in their life. You haven't the faintest idea what that is because, let's face it, you do not have the luxury of spending your entire day checking Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

Motorola Migrate always seemed a little unnecessary to me - if you're coming from an Android phone, all your contacts should already be saved with Google, and I never saw the point of hoarding years of text messages. But Migrate has allowed for easy contact transfers from Apple's iPhone line, and with the latest update, it can even grab them from other 'dumbphones' as well. (Sorry, I let some inner fanboy out there.)

According to the update text, Motorola Migrate can now import contacts from "non-smartphones," as long as they have Bluetooth and follow the standard contact transfer system that's been in place since before Android existed.

Emoji are a staple in conversations for many, many people. They offer a colorful, language-agnostic way to convey thoughts and intent that can’t always come across in a wall of text. Instant messaging is the most common home to these little pictograms, but it's not unheard of for them to appear elsewhere, particularly within contact names. Unfortunately, when Emoji are used to decorate contacts in Gmail, it can interfere with the syncing service and prevent those contacts from crossing between devices.

One complaint many Glass users have voiced since the Explorer Program began is that Glass has very limited contact management capabilities. Users could add contacts in the MyGlass interface, but those manually added contacts were the only ones a user could correspond with using Google's eye-mounted computer.

The Glass team is fixing that - and a number of other things - in an update to XE20.1, announced today. The update will allow Glass to see all a user's contacts, with starred contacts showing up for quick voice access.